The Big “OOPS!”

I couldn’t be pregnant. It wasn’t possible. Several doctors had told me it was not possible. The doctors that had ordered my MRI did not even give me a pregnancy test because it wasn’t possible. How could I be pregnant?

A week or two before I heard the news, the GYN that I had met with informed me that I most likely had a uterine defect. He did a transvaginal ultrasound, but was unable to get a clear picture because of the amount of pain that I was in. He told me that since I was missing my left kidney, he thought that I had a unicornuate uterus with a rudimentary horn.

Here is where google was my worst enemy. I spent hours researching what a unicornuate uterus was. After reading all that I could find, I was worried. Things were worse than I had initially thought.

It is estimated that about 4% of women have some sort of Mullerian anomaly. There are several different presentations, the most common being a bicornuate uterus. The most rare being a unicornuate uterus. The chances of carrying a baby to full term with a unicornuate uterus is about 47%. The chance of a miscarriage is about 37%. The figures that I varied slightly from site to site, but all the information I found said that this was a rare condition with a very low full term birth rate and a high miscarriage rate.

A week later, I found out I pregnant.

I had a complete and total breakdown. I was so happy to find out that I could get pregnant, but at the same time I was terrified. I had not gotten the results back from the MRI and the best information that I had received is that the doctors thought I had a defect. A defect that would mean that I had a less than 50% of keeping the baby that I had spent 4 years thinking I would never be able to have.

All I could do now was wait. I had gotten the phone call from the MRI technician that I was pregnant on Friday. Monday was when my follow appointment was supposed to be. I received a phone call on Monday that the doctor’s office still hadn’t received the final report for the MRI so they would need to reschedule my follow-up appointment. My response? “Hell no. They called me on Friday and told me I was pregnant. I am coming in.”

What happened at this appointment was just the first of many traumatic experiences during my pregnancy.

My fiance and I showed up the appointment terrified. We still were unsure of the MRI results and neither of us knew what to prepare for. Scared, we waited in the exam room while the nurse hunted down the mobile ultrasound machine. The doctor walks in and says, “This is *so and so*. He is a student and he will be sitting in on this appointment.” Excuse me? Shouldn’t I have a choice in the matter? Shouldn’t I be allowed to say whether a strange man other than my doctor has the right to watch a probe be shoved up my vagina to find out whether or not I was carrying a baby in my defective uterus? Apparently not.

The ultrasound showed that I was about 6 weeks pregnant. I was scared. I had just had an MRI, and since I had never had an MRI before, I did not know if there was a chance it could have harmed the baby. I asked my doctor. His response shocked me.

“Well, you’re within the first six weeks, so if you lost it, you lost it. But you didn’t, so its fine.”

I was shocked. He continued talking about scheduling more ultrasounds, setting me up with a specialist, scheduling more appointments, but honestly, I only know that because I asked my fiance after the appointment was over. I was shocked that a OBGYN, a doctor whose specialty is women and their reproductive systems and pregnancies, could not care less whether I had lost my baby. He didn’t even seem concerned that he had made a massive mistake by never even giving me a pregnancy test.

I changed doctors as I was checking out after my appointment. I wish I could say that was the last time I had to change doctors.

A few links for background information on Mullerian Anomalies and Unicornuate uteri: